OHS alum sees study abroad experience cut short by pandemic

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Katie Counts

Counts was supposed to study abroad in Bangkok for five months. That time was cut short by COVID-19.

The new coronavirus pandemic has caused schools to shift to online learning, cancel events, and postpone others. Many college students studying abroad were forced to come home, including one OHS alumnus.

Katie Counts is a 2017 graduate of OHS and quickly became very familiar to the school’s journalism history. She was a member of the yearbook staff, taking the clubs and academic editor position her junior year and editor-in-chief her senior year. She participated on the newspaper staff her senior year and won an excellent rating in Feature Writing at the National High School Journalism Convention her senior year in Indianapolis. Counts is now in her third year at the University of Kansas studying journalism.

She began this semester studying abroad in Bangkok, Thailand, but she was urged to return home after concerns over the coronavirus pandemic. She returned to St. Louis on March 22 and has not experienced any signs of COVID-19, but wrote about her experience on the trip back to St. Louis. 

Read her story here (courtesy of the Daily Kansan):

http://www.kansan.com/opinion/mai-pen-rai-it-will-be-ok-ku-junior-says/article_254a3852-6af5-11ea-8abd-b74aaf7f99ad.html